Wit's End Hardcover - 2008

by Karen Joy Fowler

If you loved The Jane Austen Book Club,you'll revel in Wit's End, a sly and clever novelof mystery, intrigue, and virtual reality.

Wit's End is many things: aquest novel ayoungwoman's search for the truth about her deadfather's past; a mystery the story of a long-agomurder in which that father might have been complicit; and agame one that ensnares readers in cunning deceptions, challengingthem to separate the true from the fictive.

Set in contemporary Santa Cruz, the novel centers on RimaLanisell, a young woman at loose ends, having just lost her fatherto cancer. (Rima seems to lose people and things habitually sunglasses and car keys, lovers and family members.) Now shehas come to coastal California at the behest of her godmother,Addison Early, who once knew Rima's father well. Perhaps toowell. Rima is on a mission to discover just what that relationshipwas really about.

Addison, a bestselling mystery writer, is secretive and feisty.Over the years, she has tried to protect her work and her privacyas her passionate fans have become ever more intrusive. Inthis age of the Internet, with its blogs, chat rooms, websites, itsWikipedia, false personas, and hidden identities, those fans havebegun to take over the plot lines and the life of her famous fictionaldetective. For many, he is more real than Addison herself.So Wit's End is also a highly inventive take on the way dedicatedreaders appropriate their favorite books, perhaps the one act oftheft applauded the world over except by authors.

Above all, Wit's End is Karen Joy Fowler at her most subversiveand witty, creating characters both oddball and endearing ina voice that is uniquely and memorably her own.